So Close I Can Smell It

I was going over my outline yesterday and realized that while I do have my point-form notes on all the remaining scenes, I hadn’t blocked them out into chapters. After a bunch of hemming and hawwing I think I have it all laid out, and I was very surprised to see that it looks like I only have about two and a half chapters left! I’m partway through 19 now, and I have it marked down that 21 is the last one. For so long the ending has felt like a forever time away, but I usually get through about a chapter a week, a chapter being 5-7,000 words, and that means I could be done in three weeks’ time. I can even have a bit of a break from the story before I start revising in early November!

I’m a little bit excited and a little bit sad about the prospect of being done. Making your old words better isn’t the same as making new words, and I think my heart is mainly in the ‘making new words’ camp. Who knows? Maybe the shift will be good for me. I’m also very relieved to see that it doesn’t look like I’m going to be over the 30,000 words I estimated from my 100,000-word goal. It looks more like fifteenish. I can find 15,000 words to cut, no problem.

Now, with all that said, it’s not going to be easy writing to the finish line. Things are about to get very, very difficult for Callie over the next 50 pages. Poor girl. I like her so much, it’s hard to break her down like this. She’ll thank me in the end though.

3 Responses to “So Close I Can Smell It”

Good luck! I know what you mean about the last few pages being difficult. Only yesterday did I manage to finish a novel I’ve been working on for years because I liked my characters too much and didn’t know what to do with them.